Fifteen top takes from Boris Johnson’s memoir

Boris Johnson’s new memoir Unleashed is to be published next week, and with the highly-anticipated account promising to be the ‘political memoir of the century’, Mr S was rather interested in what exactly it contains within its pages. Steerpike has put together a list of the top 15 things we learned from the former Prime Minister’s lengthy memoir…

Partygate stories ‘grossly exaggerated’

First to one of the most prominent scandals of Boris Johnson’s career: the matter of Partygate. In his 800-page tome, the former PM insists that he was told by his adviser that the pandemic parties broke no lockdown rules. Johnson admits he put it down as ‘desperate nonsense being peddled by embittered former advisers’ and ‘forgot about it’. On his Covid fine – received after the ex-PM was said to have been ‘ambushed by cake’ – Johnson fumed: ‘I saw no cake. I ate no blooming cake. If this was a party, it was the feeblest event in the history of human festivity.’